The biggest cheer came in the first half of the game when Shaquille O'Neal, the Los Angeles Lakers center, made a surprise appearance. He walked through the crowd to center court, acknowledged the cheers, then went to the Cash Money bench and sat down.

Legitimate basketball has always borrowed heavily from the street game, but unabated trash-talking remains the province of the playground, as fundamental to street art as the dunk.

On Tuesday, Shaq and the Loud Terror Squad's John Strickland, a k a the Franchise, got into a game of one-upmanship.

When the Franchise told O'Neal what he was going to do to him, O'Neal said: ''Who am I, though? Who am I?''

The crowd was loving the incongruity of it all: O'Neal, the most valuable player of the N.B.A. finals, and the Franchise in a good-natured exchange.

O'Neal left to cheers at intermission. The Franchise stayed, and his team lost.

Greg Marius, the founder and chief executive of the league, was pleased. This wasn't Earl (the Goat) Manigault plucking a quarter off the top of the backboard, but it worked.

Marius began his league in Mount Morris Park at 120th Street and Fifth Avenue in 1982. It played on weekends only.

''I added a little twist to what basketball is about,'' he said. ''I ran up and down the court, and when I got into the hip-hop era, I was a rapper. I had records out. I just brought both worlds together.''

Nearly 20 years later, the Entertainers Classic has grown into a mostly corporate-sponsored league. The league is a lot less on the edge but more orderly. The tradeoff is a lot more love from mainstream sponsors.

With the help of Game Face Productions, Marius has pulled in more sponsors. The N.B.A. telecasts games on Friday nights on NBA.com TV, the league's 24-hour network. The telecast reaches 13 million homes.

Beginning next week, the N.B.A.'s development league will send scouts to Entertainment League games to identify players to invite to development league tryouts later this summer.

From Marius's perspective, the N.B.A.'s interest in street ball represents a startling change of attitude for a league that once didn't want its players playing in these summer games popularized in the late 1960's and 70's by the legendary Rucker Tournament.

''The N.B.A. was trying to market their event and they realized, how can they get somebody to spend $50 for a ticket when you can see a regular street guy in the park blow that guy away on the court,'' Marius said. ''So they told them they couldn't play in the street games anymore.

''We got the new-generation guys that said, 'Forget that clause,' '' Marius said. ''They're saying: 'We want to play. This is where it's at in the summertime.' ''

At a time when Harlem is undergoing a steady infusion of new business interest, from a former president to movie chains, will street basketball become part of the Starbucks-ization of Harlem?

The Entertainers League will be involved in All-Star weekend. And a joint N.B.A.-Entertainers clothing line is coming out.

The gap between the street game and so-called legitimate ball continues to narrow. As N.B.A. rookies become younger, spectacular dunks and passes, once reserved for the playground and demonized by control-freak coaches, have been institutionalized. What used to be foreign to N.B.A. fans is becoming familiar, and they like it.

''The powers are learning that they have to accept it if they don't want to lose out on what they're doing, so they're embracing us,'' Marius said. ''They realized that 'we can bridge the gap by dealing with them, and still do our own thing.' We're that gap.

''We're like a franchise. There are 29 teams in the N.B.A. We're the extra team.''